Processes of subjectivity inscribed in the constitution of the nurse's experience of the self in the assistance practices of exemplar work scenery: the unity of intensive therapy

RESUMOS

Processes of subjectivity inscribed in the constitution of the nurse's experience of the self in the assistance practices of exemplar work scenery: the unity of intensive therapy

This study describes and analyzes the processes of subjectivity inscribed in the constitution of the nurse’s experience of the self, in the care practices of an exemplar work scenery – the Intensive Therapy Unit through submitting them to Foucault’s perspective about truth regimes. In so doing, this study intends to examine the conditions in which the nurse asks herself/himself what she/he is. In the processes of subjectivity, we try to question technologies of the self – truth games through which the nurse reflects upon herself/himself, when she/he realizes herself/himself, recognizes herself/himself, judges herself/himself as one. The theoretical referential of Michel Foucault, complemented by studies of Jorge Larrosa about the apparatus of production and mediation of the experience of the self, were used as guides. This research took place at the Intensive Therapy Unit of the Julio Muller University Hospital, a Public Institution of the Public Health System in Cuiabá, Brazil. The research group was constituted mainly of nurses who work with health care activities in this University Hospital. Once the technologies of the self constitute apparatus of reflexivity, we became interested by the nurse’s experience of the self, always considering that other workers participate of this construction. The technical instruments used in this study tried to capture the care practices in their material discursive sense and also in their material non-discursive sense, trying to select exemplary cases and registries, as well as discordant cases of these practices. The data analysis was done through the construction of several research boards, which were a result of the attention given to the materiality of the practices, of the subject’s power relation, of the subject’s relation with herself/himself, as the constitution of the nurse’s experience of the self – as a historically singular experience- relates to fields of camps, power arenas, and processes of subjectivity. The production and mediation apparatus of the experience of being a nurse shows their materiality in the daily practices of reading and intervention upon the body/machine in the ITU in the mechanisms. In such practices they developed (and still develop) competences concerning the objectivity of the clinical staff and produced (and still produce) the experience of being the nurse, the extension of the doctor’s eyes and arms; the clinical language was captured (and is captured daily), the experience of being the nurse, a subject of the clinical speech, was produced (and is still produced); each person’s place was marked (and is still marked); and the experience of place of herself/himself, the nurse, was produced (and is daily produced) n relation to the other agents of the practices in the ITU. In these mechanisms, the production of a professional perspective is observed, as a perspective that prefers the "clinic" instead of "care"; and a professional performance which is oriented by the clinic. In the complexity of this experience, and as a contingent form to these apparatus and mechanisms, lies the interrogation of the possibilities of the nurse’s self government in the current work scenarios.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  13 Sept 2007
• Date of issue
  Mar 2007